The Perils of Arousal on School Grounds
by Anguis
Summary: Thanks to a student's prank, Hogwarts is in sudden need of a new caretaker, in addition to the already-open post of Keeper of Keys and Grounds. The portrait of Albus connives, Minerva is secretly grateful, Filius and Poppy find out where making assumptions gets them, and Millicent and Dudley discover the difficulties and rewards of living a married life at Hogwarts.


**Pairings:** Dudley Dursley/Millicent Bulstrode, with a Filius Flitwick/Poppy Pomfrey cameo

 **Author's Notes:** This was written for the 2014 HP Beholder for Nothorse. I'm hoping that my formatting is resistant to ff.n's meddling, but if it isn't, I do apologise and might eventually get around to fixing it.

* * *

 **The Perils of Arousal on School Grounds**

"That'll teach Chilcott to mess around with Transfiguration he doesn't understand!"

"Those poor children! You could see her nipples— _nipples_!"

"That wasn't all you could—"

"Septima Vector!"

"Poor children? It's Argus I feel sorry for, having the love of his life trapped for years in a mangy cat's body—"

"I told you that's the only way he'd be getting any pussy," murmured Septima _sotto voce_ , although not _sotto_ enough to avoid being soundly smacked on the arm by a scandalized Aurora Sinistra.

"—only to have her finally return to her true form in front of the entire staff and student body, mother-naked and with half a mouse digesting in her stomach." Pomona Sprout paused and shook her head. "On second thought, perhaps it's Mrs Norris I feel sorriest for."

Minerva McGonagall, Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, rapped the table to forestall the emergency staff meeting from derailing before it had even properly begun.

"We usually don't teach Sexual Development and Sorcery until the spring, when nature forces our hand by flaunting her sexuality in all its furred, fanged, and spiny-penised glory—"

"It was _one_ measly Galumphing Hornswoggle," Septima interjected.

The interruption was quelled by Minerva's right eyebrow inching imperiously up her forehead as she continued, "—and when the students are getting restless anyway." It was obvious where this was headed, and most of the quills in the room began refiguring the next day's lesson plans, cutting expendable examples and adjusting homework assignments, so that, by the time the Headmistress reached, "I am sorry to ask you to disrupt your schedules tomorrow by beginning each class with twenty minutes of introductory sexual development instruction, from the perspective of your particular discipline and appropriate to student age," the necessary arrangements had already been made. It was one of those distasteful but inescapable tasks, like taking your turn at renewing the leak-proofing charms on the school's ancient cesspit, and it wasn't as if it were Minerva's fault that their students had been exposed to involuntary public nudity.

 **~O~O~**

"Albus," Minerva groaned, kneading her forehead with one hand and balancing a large glass of Firewhisky in the other.

"If you'd like to send your students to me tomorrow, I'd be more than willing to help out. _You_ always appreciated my wandwork—" At this, Minerva rolled her eyes heavenward and gulped the rest of her glass. "—and you know I'm always willing to lend a hand."

"We are merely educating them on their developing bodies and giving them the tools to make responsible decisions in the matter of sex, not trying to put them off it forever."

The portrait was good—better even than the high standard of quality exhibited by the paintings displayed in the castle's corridors—and for a moment she could almost feel Albus' spark of amused pleasure at her repartee. It was more enjoyment than she'd been able to muster for the last chaotic twenty-four hours, and she allowed the moment to linger, basking in the reflected merriment before slogging on to the next unpleasant task.

"There _is_ something you could do for me, though. Will you listen in to the interview next week, Albus? I'd value your opinion, although I'm inclined to hire on young Bulstrode on the spot, regardless of her qualifications. Hagrid was gracious enough to remain on while we locate a replacement, but he is understandably anxious to be off." She pursed her lips. "And now we are in need of a caretaker, as well. I cannot find it in my heart to stay angry with Argus, but his sudden departure has left us in a bind. We cannot safely keep the school running for very long without a replacement."

"Is Miss Bulstrode still a Miss?"

Minerva contemplated Albus' benign countenance suspiciously.

"You already know the answer to that question," she accused. "In fact, I'd wager a case of Firewhisky that you've been conniving since the moment Argus threw down his mop."

And for that she was heartily grateful. She was as capable a Transfigurationist as had ever set wand to hedgehog and had been a proficient Deputy Headmistress; however, age and grief and the monumental responsibility of restoring a broken castle and even more broken people after the Battle of Hogwarts had worn away at her. She was still more than competent to run the school (and had vowed to step down the moment she believed herself to be otherwise), but it was a great solace to know that someone—even if it was only an above-average portrait imbued with its subject's penchant for meddling—was looking out for her.

 **~O~O~**

Millicent's interview was short and relatively painless. Professor McGonagall asked a few questions, Millicent answered gruffly and asked for reassurance that the teaching duties had indeed been removed from the job description, and the portrait of Professor Dumbledore twinkled cheerfully in the background. The offer was made and accepted in a matter of minutes. Hogwarts had a new Keeper of Keys and Grounds, and Minerva had one less headache.

Dudley was then escorted into the office. The journey through the castle, a continuous bombardment by what seemed to him to be ostentatious displays of magic, had left him pale and wide-eyed and desperately trying to hide his anxiety.

"You're sure I can do this job? Millicent did tell you I'm a norm—, er, a Muggle, yeah?"

The Headmistress inclined her head. "Your references claim that you are a hard worker and capable of learning any new task presented you, so long as it doesn't involve much reading or writing." A little colour came back into his face at the frank assessment of his abilities. "Besides, your predecessor was a Squib, and he was eminently suited to the position."

Dudley's eyes bugged out of his head. "What? But I . . . I don't even know how to swim!"

Millicent's rough laugh barked out, and she cuffed her husband fondly on the shoulder as she explained, "A _Squib_ is born to magical parents, but can't do magic himself. Filch was just as human as you are."

He looked slightly less dubious, and asked warily, "So, I don't need tentacles to do this job?"

 **~O~O~**

"You're full of shit."

Millicent was prepared for a sarcastic riposte to her badly timed joke. Instead, Dudley's shoulders just sagged as globs of sewage spattered onto the stone floor outside their rooms. She shrugged an apology.

"Kids are little shits," he announced, then glared, as if daring her to crack a smile. "And that's _not_ what bothers me. They're kids, and they're supposed to have stupid ideas and act like gits and vandalize school property and stuff. What pisses me off is that any one of 'em could have stopped it with a few waves of their wand. Instead, I spent two hours having a hexed toilet vomit raw sewage in my face, and then it _ate_ me! It swallowed me down through the pipes, and I ended up in the cesspit for the whole school. I almost _drowned_ in piss and shit, Millicent." He coughed, cleared his throat, coughed again, then bent double as a paroxysm of retching overtook him. It was his sixth such attack since extricating himself from the cesspit, so there was nothing left to bring up, and the dry heaves were pushing him closer and closer to collapse.

 _Almost drowned._ Her throat tightened, and she managed to muster enough nonchalance to warn him not to ooze all over the carpet.

A weary grimace that would have been a smirk under better circumstances let her know that her concern had not gone unnoticed. She cast a cursory containment charm and led him to their bathroom.

While the location just off the entrance hall was decidedly convenient for both of them, there were a few drawbacks to their rooms at the castle.

Like many of her classmates, Millicent had begun her time at Hogwarts never imagining that her teachers ever bothered themselves with anything so base as bodily functions, and had ended by conjuring up lurid tales of wild faculty orgies in a secret facility twice the size and opulence of the prefects' bathroom, tiled with Italian marble mosaics, lined with floor-to-ceiling mirrors, and equipped with taps that spouted twenty-two different flavours of lube.

Reality was not nearly as glamorous. They had a private bathroom, which was a boon even under normal circumstances, but no shower, which at the moment was regrettable. The heating charms that must have been cast on the rough stone walls and floor at least half a century ago were beginning to deteriorate, and the plumbing was even more ancient (and just as questionable). There were also curious traces of a mostly cleaned-up jinx that caused the sink to turn invisible on every third Tuesday of the month.

Wanting to rinse the worst of it off before running him a bath, Millicent stood Dudley in the large cast iron tub and pulled out her wand. He squealed and jerked away from the jet of water, nearly toppling over backwards when the backs of his knees met the rim.

"If you wanted warm water, you should've married someone smarter."

A half-hearted glare was back in place, a marked improvement on the abject misery she'd seen a minute ago, and he managed to respond through chattering teeth, "Just warn me before you start hosing me down with ice water."

"Consider yourself warned." Millicent gave Dudley a moment to see the water splashing into the tub beside his feet before redirecting the stream upwards.

She had just deemed him clean enough for an actual bath when another wracking coughing-turned-gagging fit had him gripping the side of the tub to stay on his feet. Through his gasping and heaving, Millicent ascertained from him that he hadn't seen Poppy after his unfortunate dip in the cesspit (then guiltily realised that she should have already figured that out from his feculent state).

Millicent used a pinch of Floo Powder to activate the school's highly warded internal Floo network. When she stuck her head in the fire, the view that met her eyes puzzled her for a second—two worn soles and a small, round rear end. Then her field of vision expanded to include the school's matron reclining in a chair, her chin tipped back to expose the long, pale line of her throat and her legs splayed wide to accommodate the body attached to the shoes and rump.

Millicent cleared her throat. There was no indication that either party heard. She cleared it again to no avail. In attempting to clear it for a third time yet more loudly, a series of coughs burst forth instead.

The unmistakable squeak of the Deputy Headmaster's voice emanated from beneath the robes rucked up in Poppy's lap. "I thought you blocked the fireplace!"

Poppy stared down at the fabric-covered, head-shaped protrusion between her legs in befuddled disbelief. " _Me?_ You were already here when I returned from sorting out Thornberry, and you had started the fire. I assumed you had also performed the necessary charms."

"Madam, erm, Poppy? I, well . . . ." Millicent's voice trailed off as her feeble attempt to interrupt the recriminations went unnoticed.

She was a witch of the world. She was _married_ , for Merlin's sake! In fact, if Dudley were in the bath for any reason other than the current circumstances, she would be wedged in there with him, indulging her carnal appetites without a qualm. She'd never walked in on her parents going at it, as her mum had died when Millicent was quite young, but now she was beginning to appreciate the horror with which her husband had recoiled when they had caught his parents in the act. For the seven years she'd been a pupil at Hogwarts, Poppy and Flitwick (' _Filius_ ,' her mind interjected. ' _He's a colleague. You're an adult, and he's now your colleague._ ') had healed her injuries and corrected her wand technique, had lectured her and guided her and protected her. She supposed they came nearly as close to being parent figures as her own father, which made this encounter all the more mortifying.

"Poppy," she began again in a more commanding voice (the one she'd discovered to be most effective on students intent on mischief). "I'm sorry to disturb you, but I think Dudley ought to see you. He fell into the cesspit, and he keeps coughing and gagging, and he looks fit to collapse."

When she retold the anecdote later that night to her much improved husband, he had recovered enough of his sense of humour to joke that she had found the magic words to stir the matron into action. It didn't make sense and wasn't funny, but Millicent didn't care. She merely brushed her fingers through his newly washed hair and rested her head on his (still breathing) chest.

 **~O~O~**

"Millicent! Millicent!" The pounding rattled the old brass doorknob and made the key jump from the lock.

Dudley swore, removed his hands from his wife's arse, attempted to refasten her gaping robes only to have his fumbling hands swatted away, and went to brew a cup of tea to try to distract himself from his frustration.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, but the Clabberts have escaped from their enclosure and disappeared into the Forbidden Forest. You'll need to round them up before the Blood-Sucking Bugbear gets to them, but I imagine you know that better than I do." Pomona Sprout smiled warmly up at Millicent. "And you might want to check your robes again before you go out there."

 **~O~O~**

"Eight hours taking dictation for Professor Binns?" Millicent had a couple hundred keys of varying sizes, shapes, and metals spread out in front of her on the table. She had emptied all of her key rings and was sorting the keys into piles based on location of the lock, with a separate (distressingly large) pile for unidentified keys. "Isn't that a bit harsh?"

Dudley's perpetually pink cheeks darkened to an angry red. "Harsh? Not when they—" He checked himself abruptly. "They deserved it. More than that, but I'm not allowed to hit kids."

Millicent swallowed the sarcastic response bubbling up in her throat. It had bothered him more than she had realised, and far more than it had bothered her. "It's not like it's the first time I've been called that. In fact—" She stopped at the stricken look on his face.

"Someone told you?" Dudley may have been six feet tall and twenty-one stone, with glints of gold stubble on his cheeks and fists like sledgehammers, but at that moment, he resembled nothing so much as a small boy who had just witnessed his toad being squashed by a rogue Bludger.

His embrace was sudden and fierce, and he stank of sweat and silver polish and something that hinted that he may have had another less-than-successful encounter with the third-floor boys' bathroom, but Millicent gladly buried her face in the collar of his shirt.

When they'd first met, she'd liked Dudley right away because he was strong and tough and didn't take crap from anyone (his plump cheeks, twice-broken nose, and hint of a double chin hadn't hurt, either). It wasn't until much later that she discovered his emotions ran deep, and he had a streak of sentimentality where she had none. By then, they had grown too much attached to each other for her to cut and run. Now, several years into negotiating married life together, Millicent found herself grudgingly endeared by these fleeting glimpses of a side of her husband most of the rest of the world rarely saw.

 **~O~O~**

Millicent was drawing a hot bath for two when she heard the thud of a fist on their outer door, followed shortly by an agitated voice.

Dudley called out, "Something's flooding the kitchens, and no one's found where the water's coming from. Don't wait up!"

She sighed, ran more water into the tub, and settled in for a long, solitary soak.

 **~O~O~**

"Caught the two boys who've been messing with the toilets. It was Chilcott and Harris."

Millicent looked up from lubricating the rail of her crossbow. "What'd you do with them?" She hoped they had a long and arduous series of detentions ahead of them. Their pranks had plagued Dudley for months.

He grinned. "Told 'em they shouldn't waste such talent on provoking someone who could rearrange their faces with his fists before they could pull their wands out of their arses."

Millicent laughed, then glanced sharply at his cheerful face. "You didn't _actually_ say. . . ." She slapped her palm to her forehead. "You did. Did you _like_ living with your parents? Because you're going to get us tossed out like last week's rubbish if you carry on like that."

He protested, "I'm not a complete idiot, Millicent. I know that even at this freak school you can't just threaten students and then walk away like nothing's happened."

 _Thank goodness he never met Filch_ , she thought.

"So I gave 'em a proper lecture on respect for property and consideration for the people who take care of it. They were scared shitless when I caught 'em at it, and they seemed to get what I was saying. It's not that they're _evil_ or nothing. They're just boys cooped up in school with too many teachers yapping at 'em and not enough interesting things to do . . . worthwhile, active things, I mean." He stood there ruminating for a minute. "I know I wasn't too happy when you first talked me into coming here, but I think maybe this is my chance to start putting things right. I'm not gonna turn into my dad, and I sure as hell ain't gonna be like my teachers!"

Millicent raised an eyebrow. "So you let them get off with a _talking to_?"

Dudley's pensive mood lifted. "As I said, I'm not a complete idiot. I gave 'em each three feet of parchment in their neatest printing."

"Printing's a bitch with a quill, but are you sure that's going to be enough?"

"They have to write about all the harmless pranks they'd like to pull that wouldn't be a pain in my arse, and then they'll have to pitch the cleverest ones to me. If they came up with something really good, I said I'd think about helping 'em pull it off if they'd agree to stop sabotaging the toilets."

Millicent carefully laid her crossbow aside to rest her forehead against the cool wood of the table and wondered if she would survive moving back in with her in-laws.

 **~O~O~**

She needed the key to the second auxiliary broom cupboard in the hospital wing, where some of the most rarely used potions were stored away from heat, light, and careless hands.

Millicent could have put her fist through the one of the glass-fronted cabinets in annoyance. She refrained not out of courtesy to Poppy, but because it would have further delayed her return to the warm bed out of which she had just been roused and where Dudley waited impatiently. Instead, she huffed loudly and began looking through the large ring of keys she had yet to identify.

 **~O~O~**

It was an ingenious piece of magic. The impressive flashes and bangs gave an illusion of danger and destruction without actually perpetrating either, and an elaborate system of flawlessly executed cascading timing charms had been employed to choreograph the whole production.

Filius had had a hard time keeping a straight face while Minerva addressed the students. He chortled over it to Poppy that night and longed to know who had planned it. From the magical signatures, he was pretty sure he knew the primary culprits (not that he would divulge that information to Minerva; rather, he had an idea to surreptitiously recruit the two boys for an extracurricular Charms project), but he was equally sure that neither of them had the wherewithal to gain entry to the Staff Room nor the enterprise to research the teachers' tea habits without a firm guiding hand. He desperately wanted to discover the identity of their other conspirator, but was determined not to ask. He had eked out a living as a stage magician for several years before finding a Charms master willing to take him on as an apprentice, and he knew that the best performers never divulged their secrets. His respect for a fellow showman's integrity won out over curiosity, although that didn't stop him from speculating.

Poppy sighed and tutted at his enthusiasm for student delinquency, then opened her robes and encouraged him to put his mouth to better use.

 **~O~O~**

 _Tap. Tap-tap._

Dudley mumbled around the nipple in his mouth, "Please tell me I'm hearing things."

"Yeah, you're hearing things, alright. It's the sound of celibacy knocking."

 _Tap-tap-tap._

Millicent's robes were closer to hand, so she pulled them over her head wrong side out and stalked out to throw the door open.

"I'm sorry, erm, Mrs Dudley, ma'am. Is, is—" A sallow boy, all gangly limbs and awkward angles, quailed under her fierce glower and stammered on. "It's . . . late, I, I know. But is he . . . is he here?"

Wordlessly, she turned her back and returned to the bedroom. Dudley already had a ragged tee-shirt on and was attempting the painful task of tucking his still semi-erect cock into his jeans.

"It's Chilcott."

Two and a half hours later, Dudley slipped back into the bed behind Millicent.

"He just needed a friendly ear. . . . and a better left hook."

"You're too fucking soft-hearted," she grumbled into her pillow as he draped an arm around her waist.

"Mmm," he sighed sleepily, nuzzling her neck. "Can't help it if I'm more in touch with my feminine side than you are."

Too drowsy to do more than kick at his shins, she rejoined, "Remind me to thump you in the morning."

His only answer was a soft snore.

 **~O~O~**

"It wasn't British Bark Borers after all. The Whomping Willow just has a mild infestation of giant aphids, which is easily treatable, so the Forbidden Forest is safe, and we won't have to chop or burn anything." Satisfaction was evident in Millicent's voice as she shed cloak, gauntlets, boots, socks, outer-robes, and under-robes. She paused. "I didn't think I'd be in before midnight, and I definitely didn't expect you to be here so soon."

Dudley stretched luxuriously on the Niffler fur rug in front of the fireplace. He had already divested himself of all his clothing except his boxers, his skin glowing pink from the fire, and Millicent thought that she would trade all the marble statues of Greece and Rome for this image of her husband reclining by the hearth waiting for _her_.

"Everyone and everything in this madhouse was behaving today. The only thing to interrupt my usual cleaning duties was a busted desk in the Charms classroom. Filius said Pemberton's wand had an operator error. Blew the top to smithereens, so all I had to do was sweep up the splinters."

Millicent groaned. "And here I was about to suggest an _early night_." She palmed her breasts suggestively. "But you're obviously overdue for a catastrophe. Somewhere there's a staircase just waiting for me to get aroused so that it can grind to a halt mid-swing and strand a prefect on his nightly rounds."

Chuckling as he wriggled around to tug his waistband past his hips without getting up, Dudley countered, "And here _I_ thought it would be those cock-blocking centaurs that would time their next rebellion to my next erection." He shucked off the boxers to reveal that said member was already stretching up to brush the underside of his paunch.

"Sod the bloody centaurs," Millicent declared as she lay down beside him on the soft rug, "and the stairs and the Thestrals and the Whomping Willow and the toilets and the whole fucking castle."

 **~O~O~**

"Are you sure?" Minerva asked doubtfully. "I would think he'd rather deal with the mess now than wake up to it first thing tomorrow."

"Trust me," Albus replied, flicking the bobble on his nightcap over his shoulder. "Pomona said it was under control. He'll thank you in the morning for it."

" _Trust me,_ " she grumbled under her breath. " _Trust me._ The last time I trusted you, your brother, two of my students, and a goat nearly were treated to a display of my knickers."

"Suit yourself." He shrugged airily. "Although, if you interrupt them now, it won't be _your_ knickers that wind up on display."


End file.
